United States or Laos ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the days of old, Thakur Baba had made everything very convenient for mankind and it was by our own fault that we made Thakur Baba angry so that he swore that we must spend labour in making things ready for use. This is the story that I have heard. When the Santals lived in Champa and the Kiskus were their kings, the Santals were very simple and religious and only worshipped Thakur.
"I am sorry," said the Raja: "I admit that I have done wrong, but if you will forgive me this time, I will undertake to cure them in a minute and make them as well as ever; go and fetch them here." So the Santals went off to fetch the wounded cowherds and carried them to the Raja, all lying senseless on beds and put them down before him.
The natives looked sullen and rather suspicious, or is it only that I imagine it because they are so unlike the broad-smiling Santals with their cheerful johar? There are four trees before this bungalow, and at present two vultures are perching on each horrible creatures, with long, scraggy necks.
There have been many cases of Santals marrying bonga girls. Not of course with formal marriage ceremonies but the marriage which results from merely living together. In Darbar village near Silingi there are two men who married bonga. One of them was very fond of playing on the flute and his playing attracted a bonga girl who came to him looking like a human girl, while he was tending buffaloes.
Then she took the lid off the iron pot and showed him the locust eating grass inside; and Chando had nothing to say. CLXII. The Sikhar Raja. Santals say that the Sikhar Raja was a bonga and this is the story they tell about him.
Men who practise sorcery dig up the bones of such murdered infants and use them as rattles when doing their sorceries and are helped by them to deceive people. CLXXII. The Dead. Santals are very much afraid of burial grounds; for dead men become bongas and bongas eat men. If a man meet such a bonga in a burial ground it is of little use to fight for the bonga keeps on changing his shape.
I should say that of males the ordinary height is from four feet six inches to five feet one inch, and of females from four feet four inches to four feet eight inches." Ethn. In the east the Santals inhabit the basin of the Ganges, and in the west the Jats belong to the Punjab, and especially to the district of the Indus.
From Taljheri and Pokhuria, near that place, to Parisnath, Ranchi, and Orissa, thousands of Santals and Kols have since been gathered into the kingdom. On the 10th January 1800 Carey took up his residence at Serampore, on the 11th he was presented to the Governor, and "he went out and preached to the natives."
Meanwhile, in this renaissance of the Hindu faith, this wide, politic, self-adapting system, we find not only Buddhism, Philosophy, the early Aryanism, and the stiff cultus of Brahmanism, but there is also a large infusion of the original superstitions of the Dravidians, Kohls, Santals, and other nature worshippers of the hill tribes.
And this is the reason why Santals learn to chew tobacco when they are alive; for it is of no use to merely smoke a huka: in the next world we shall not be allowed to knock off work in order to smoke. In the next world also it is very difficult to get water to drink.
Word Of The Day